Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* As much as I’m disinterested in national polls for 2008, I nevertheless think polls from the early primary states are fairly significant, because voters in the first handful of states will help drive the process. With that in mind, a new poll<\/a> from Iowa’s Des Moines Register raised a lot of eyebrows over the weekend, when it showed Mitt Romney pulling out in front among the state’s Republicans with 30% support. John McCain was second with 18%, followed by Giuliani with 17%. No other candidate reached double digits (Tommy Thompson places a distant fourth with 7%).<\/p>\n * As for the Dems, the same Iowa Poll<\/a> showed John Edwards leading the pack with 29%, followed by Barack Obama with 23%, and Hillary Clinton with 21%. Bill Richardson, whose ads recently hit Iowa airwaves, garnered 10% support and was the only other candidate to reach double digits.<\/p>\n * Speaking of good news for Romney, James Dobson, fresh off his denunciation of Rudy Giuliani, shared some praise for the former Massachusetts governor late last week, and suggested he might back his candidacy<\/a>. “I mean he’s very presidential and he’s got the right answers to many, many things,” Dobson told conservative commentator Laura Ingraham on her show. Dobson said he hasn’t decided whom to back, but that Romney “is still on the list.”<\/p>\n * Most political observers agree that Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) is vulnerable next year, but that only applies if Dems find a strong challenger. Late last week, Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) announced he, too, would skip the race<\/a>. Wu’s announcement follows Democratic Reps. DeFazio, Blumenauer, and Hooley, who have all said they’re not running for the Senate.<\/p>\n * And last week there was considerable scuttlebutt about a possible independent presidential ticket featuring NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). In case there was any doubt, sources close to Bloomberg insist that if the two did pair up, the mayor would not settle for the VP slot<\/a>. “I’m not sure he would run for president, but I’m fairly certain that he wouldn’t want to run for vice president,” said a rep for Bloomberg’s company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * As much as I’m disinterested in national polls for 2008, I nevertheless think polls from the early primary states are fairly significant, because voters in the first handful of states will help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}